


The Crossroads of Destiny

by mira_mirth



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avatar Zuko, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-04 18:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10996824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mira_mirth/pseuds/mira_mirth
Summary: Zuko finds out he's the Avatar. He takes it about as well as you'd expect.





	The Crossroads of Destiny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chiiyo86](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/gifts).



> This was written as a gift for [chiiyo86](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86) a silly amount of time ago, but cleaning it up and getting it to AO3 took a while ^^
> 
> The title is shamelessly lifted from one of the Zuko-significant A:TLA episodes, because titles are hard.
> 
> Many thanks to my lovely beta [agedsolarwhisk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agedsolarwhisk)!

**I.**

Zuko’s ship lurched on the stormy waves of the Southern Sea, sheets of ice smashing against the hull. A particularly large chunk of floating iceberg hit the metal of the ship just as Zuko came to stand near the railings. Zuko stumbled, the impact sending vibrations down to his very bones and knocking him off-balance on the dangerously tilted deck.

His arms windmilled uselessly as he started to fall overboard, and for a moment he believed that this was it, his search for the Avatar over, the quest to regain his honour lost because he couldn’t keep his footing in this frozen sea…

But then a gust of wind rushed out at him, at odds with where it had been blowing all along, and transported Zuko to safety several feet away. 

Zuko ended up standing next to the mast, staring around with his heart going a mile a minute. What had just happened?  

***

Whatever it was, it happened again. 

“Try the form once more, my nephew! Remember, focus on your footwork!” Uncle Iroh called out during firebending practice, and sent another gust of fire at Zuko.

Zuko fumbled, too slow to react, and, cursing everything, tried to leap out the way instead.

Lucky for him, his uncle had accidentally upended his cup of tea right at that moment and bent down to devote his attention to it, or he would’ve seen how the wind picked Zuko up and carried him to the other side of the deck.

The worst of it was, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened since his near-death experience a two weeks ago. Just the other day, Zuko had nearly managed to _fly_. He thanked his stars that nobody had noticed yet, or he would’ve faced questions all the more uncomfortable for how unequipped he was to answer them.

This looked almost like… airbending. But airbenders had died out a long time ago—Zuko would know, he’d visited all of their temples in his search for the Avatar. And while the Avatar would be, among other things, an airbender, there was certainly no Avatar on Zuko’s own ship, or his search would’ve ended before he’d even left his home port.

Given that there were no airbenders and finding the Avatar was still a distant hope, the only other option left was pranks that someone was playing on Zuko, possibly to taunt him about this relentless search for the Avatar. But who among the crew would choose to do so and how they were accomplishing it, Zuko simply couldn’t figure.

He still watched his crew like a hawk for a solid week. He didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, except that his crewmembers were more fond of drinking in their off hours than was healthy for the proper functioning of their livers.

***

Zuko had had a good few days, no air-related incidents whatsoever, and he’d almost started to relax when he had a dream that shook his fragile calm. 

It started off innocuously enough: a short airbender kid in orange robes and with a blue arrow on his forehead burst into the palace at the Fire Nation capital, dissolving that beloved image around him, and started chattering at Zuko.

“Hi!” the kid said. “I’m Aang!”

Zuko tried to go back to dreaming of his home. It didn’t work. 

“And you’re the current Avatar,” the kid continued, oblivious to how unwelcome his presence was. “I can’t believe I’m dead. I never properly got to be the Avatar, you know. But I can introduce you to some others!” 

“What?” Zuko said, blinking.

He felt strangely lucid for all that he was dreaming. Come to think of it, he also knew he was dreaming. It was then that all of this started feeling decidedly odd and Zuko made a futile attempt to wake up. 

At this point, two more people appeared in Zuko’s dream, because apparently this was a free-for-all and he had no say in what happened in his own dreams anymore. One of the people was a very weird-looking man with ragged hair and green clothing that seemed to be held together with vines. He claimed to be from a swamp of some kind, and also to have been a water Avatar. 

“Don’t get a lot of news in the swamp,” he said, like this was supposed to communicate something to Zuko. “Never got good at the Avatar thing. The war was over by the time I reached my teens, you know?”

The third person was also dressed in green, but much more richly. “I was born in Ba Sing Se,” she said. “There is no war in Ba Sing Se.”

“I’m glad for you,” Zuko said. He had no idea what was happening, but he knew he didn’t like it. “Now go away. I want to wake up!”

“We are your previous lives,” Aang said, his tone never wavering from the overly-cheery. “We’re here to guide you on your Avatar path.”

“My… what?” Zuko said. “You’re crazy.” Or Zuko was crazy, for dreaming this. “Wait, I know what this is. I’ve been so focused on my search for the Avatar that now I’m having nightmares where I _am_ the Avatar!”

“See, I understand why you’d view it this way,” Aang said, wincing. “I kind of didn’t welcome it when I found out, either. It… didn’t end well, uh. It’s a long story. But, basically, I get that it’s a lot to take in, but you know all this airbending you’ve been doing?”

Every muscle in Zuko’s body stiffened, even though he was dreaming and shouldn’t have technically felt his real-life body at all.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. The recent incidents around him hadn’t been airbending. And they certainly weren’t his own doing.

They were just… pranks someone was playing on him somehow. He didn’t know how. But airbending wasn’t involved, not in the slightest.

Aang regarded Zuko with far too much sympathy and understanding for the tiny kid that he was. “See, you can say that, but we all know that it couldn’t be anything other than airbending and that you did it, so—”

“No, I didn’t!” Zuko insisted, and he didn’t care if he started sounding a bit hysterical. “Only airbenders and the Avatar can—”

“Yes,” Aang said. “And you’re the Avatar.”

“No,” Zuko said. “I’m the one who’ll _find_ the Avatar.”

“Congratulations,” Aang said. “You have.”

The swamp guy dug into his ear with a finger, then pulled the digit out and squinted at the bug sitting on it. The Ba Sing Se lady just gazed around majestically, like the conversation didn’t concern her at all.

Zuko woke up in a cold sweat. He stared up at his ceiling and told himself that this had been nothing but a bad dream brought on by the stress of the Avatar search.

***

Zuko hadn’t slept properly in about a week. Every time he closed his eyes, the image of Aang the airbender kid swam up in his mind, with his impossible, ridiculous claims.

Zuko scowled into the night, the skin of his cheek pulling uncomfortably. His behaviour for the past few days had been odd, and Uncle definitely suspected something—he’d taken to giving Zuko long concerned glances when he thought Zuko wasn’t looking. Little did he know that, lately, Zuko was always looking, because he was too paranoid that someone would notice the way air had been acting around him. 

There had been only two further incidents. Okay, maybe four. 

But Zuko couldn’t, just couldn’t be the Avatar. It was impossible. Everyone knew that the Avatar was an airbender, lost a hundred years ago, and—

And Zuko would find him, because his father believed that he could. But not here, not on a Fire Nation ship, not within Zuko himself, because Zuko was not the Avatar and that was the end of that story.

***

Another week in the frozen wasteland of the Southern Sea, and Zuko caught himself thinking of how pointless it was to waste time here when the Avatar would never be found this way, when Zuko already knew where the Avatar was. 

The thought stopped him in his tracks, because it couldn’t be that he’d started to give in to this delusion. The dream had just been a dream, and the airbending was—

The airbending argument only worked if Zuko could actually airbend on purpose. Until he could do it, he refused to believe it.

Still, it nagged at him, this thought, this fear— _it can’t be, but how else do I explain everything, what if I really am the…?—_ and so, to silence the doubts in his mind, he took to shutting himself in his cabin to try and see if he could in fact airbend on command.

So far, the answer was “no.”

In the meanwhile, the crew of his ship wondered what was going on.

“Sir? What are your commands?” Lieutenant Jee asked one day. They’d just been drifting through ice for days now, with no direction set by Zuko. 

“Keep on this course,” Zuko said, his face blank.

Lieutenant Jee visibly restrained himself from questioning the order. It was very nearly written on his face: _are you planning to check each sheet of ice in case the Avatar is hiding under them?_ But Zuko waited in stony silence and Jee left, defeated.

***

Zuko’s crew looked increasingly like they were questioning his sanity. Uncle Iroh had taken to gently inquiring whether his dear nephew was alright. Was anything troubling him? Perhaps his old uncle could help?

But nobody could help, so Zuko scowled and shut himself up in his cabin, trying to find a way out of his conundrum.

He wasn’t the Avatar. No, definitely not. But the errant airbending around him continued, and he’d dearly love to have an expert to question about this. He was out of luck, however, because all the airbenders were dead and the only airbender he’d ever spoken to was an imaginary construct.  

Then, when Zuko was ready to give the order to go back to one of the air temples in the hope of finding some books there, he overheard his crew talking about how they were not too far from the Southern Water Tribe at this point. The ship was in their waters, but of course those tribe people would make no trouble, because they wouldn’t mess with the Fire Nation if they knew what was good for them, ha ha.

Water! Zuko felt a man seeing light after a long time wandering in darkness. In the ludicrous universe where he were the Avatar, he’d be able to master all elements, not just fire and air. And there were still living waterbenders around; if he were to work with a living teacher and fail to waterbend even a tiny drop, it would clearly eliminate “being the Avatar” from the list of what could be wrong with him.

(And if he _was_ the Avatar, a traitorous voice whispered in his mind, it wouldn’t do to pass on a chance to find a waterbending teacher…)

Now, he was not too far from the Southern Water Tribe. And that place was bound to have suitable waterbenders! This was the perfect plan.

“Set the course for the Southern Water Tribe,” Zuko told Lieutenant Jee.

Since this came with no more explanation than their earlier meanderings around ice floats did, everyone was still perplexed. Uncle Iroh graduated from concern to open worry.

“Nephew, come have tea with me,” he said. “We should talk.”

“I don’t have time to talk,” Zuko said, which was rude, but it was at least true that he had no mental energy for a conversation. Uncle would ask and prod and Zuko didn’t have any answers.

The fleeting thought came to him that he might come clean, might ask Uncle for advice. But just the idea of coming out and saying “I’m worried that I might possibly, maybe, have been airbending all over the place” made him shudder. No. Zuko didn’t need anyone’s advice for what to do with his life. His path was already clear.

***

They arrived in the Southern Water Tribe’s village during a funeral. This was not the most auspicious beginning. 

But then Zuko took one look at the body laid out on the boat and all air left his lungs in a rush. The boy—a blue arrow on his forehead, orange robes—

He’d seen this kid before. This was, in fact, the airbender kid from his dream, the one who’d introduced himself as Aang, and the world tilted around Zuko, spun uncontrollably for a second, because what—how—

“Who’s this?” he asked hoarsely, interrupting himself in the middle of saying hello.

Given that most of the tribe was hidden behind a laughably fragile fortification, he got no immediate reply. The body had been left unguarded by everyone’s retreat from the Fire Nation ship, however, so Zuko was free take a close look. It was definitely the same airbender as in his dream. Aang, he recalled, struggling to think through the shock.

If Aang had been an existing person, how could Zuko have dreamt of him? How could Zuko have known him before ever seeing him in the flesh?

If Aang had been real, what else about Zuko’s dream had been real as well?

A teenage girl in Water Tribe blues rushed forward to glare at Zuko, eyes flashing. “Leave him alone!”

“I’m not even doing anything!” Zuko snapped, blinking back to the present. A boy had run up behind the girl, tugging her back by the elbow while glaring at Zuko, but Zuko ignored all of their blustering in favour of demanding, again: “Who is this?”

“What is it to you?” the girl asked, never letting up her protective stance.

“I asked you a question,” Zuko snarled, and took a menacing step forward. He was very aware of being a firebender in a territory where fortifications would melt if he scowled at them hard enough, and of there being a whole ship of soldiers at this back while the village didn’t have much by way of an armed force. He’d get answers here whether they wanted to give them or not.

At this point, the guy who’d been holding the girl back by the elbow gave up the task and lurched forward instead. He was brandishing a boomerang. This was probably meant to be scary.

“You leave my sister alone!”

“I don’t care about your sister,” Zuko said, nearing the end of his patience. “Just tell me who this is!”

“No clue,” the guy said. He was glaring at Zuko, a twin expression to his sister’s. “We found him in an iceberg the other day. He was already dead, so we didn’t quite get his name.”

Zuko blinked. “In… an iceberg?” This didn’t help him at all. 

“Prince Zuko,” Uncle Iroh said then, coming up to them, “perhaps the meeting would go better if you were to state the point of our visit.”

“Fine,” Zuko snapped. “Have you any waterbenders here?”

His straightforward inquiry produced a most singular effect. Uncle Iroh froze by his side. The Water Tribe siblings recoiled as if struck, and the rest of their people were plain horrified. All of these changes registered with Zuko within the space of a moment, after which point the Water Tribe boy emitted an unearthly screech and launched himself, and also his boomerang, at Zuko. His sister followed suit. Suddenly, and for no reason at all, everybody went insane. 

Zuko didn’t actually want to burn—melt—whatever—this village to the ground, so he tried to shout over everybody and not cause too much carnage with his fire blasts. 

“I just want to know whether you have any waterbenders!” he demanded. “I need one!”

“Well, your scum of a nation shouldn’t have taken all of them!” the girl hissed, even as she lobbed a handful of snow in Zuko’s direction.

As far as offensive gestures went, this one wasn’t too impressive, and both of them knew this. However, air chose this particular moment to misbehave around Zuko. The snow, instead of reaching him, hurled over to the side at a none-too-natural 90-degree angle.

Somewhere in the background, Uncle Iroh was volubly restoring order, the girl’s brother was still spitting metaphorical sparks, and there was far too much shouting. The girl, however, stilled mid-motion and looked at Zuko with huge eyes. “Did you just—”

“No!” Zuko said, trying not to panic. “I don’t know what you mean. If you don’t have any waterbenders, you should have just said so! We’re leaving now.”

The number of people bemused by Zuko’s recent actions had now mounted to include the entire population of the Southern Water Tribe. Zuko’s crew still didn’t understand why they had gone to this place or why they’d left it. Nobody knew why Zuko needed waterbenders. Uncle Iroh had tried to probe him on this score, but Zuko had just said that he’d had a hunch regarding the Avatar. 

That last bit, at least was somewhat true: he did now have a big hunch regarding the Avatar. 

If Aang had been real, very possibly the rest of Zuko’s dream had reflected reality, too. And so far, nothing could explain the strange way air currents had taken a liking to him, nothing except airbending—airbending that Zuko was doing.

Zuko was airbending. Zuko could airbend and firebend both, and only the Avatar could command more than one element. 

Zuko was probably the Avatar.

***

The day Zuko thought those words, in this sequence— _I am the Avatar—_ it nearly brought him to his knees. He invented an excuse to retreat to his cabin and sat there, in front of a candle, gazing at his swords and wondering if this was a good time to put them to use. 

How could he be the Avatar, the enemy of the Fire Nation? The biggest threat to everything and everyone he loved?

How could he live with himself if this was the case?

He refused all food, turned away all visitors. He sat, hours ticking by, and asked himself what on earth he was supposed to do.

The answer came to him in the early hours of that morning, when his initial panic had receded, giving way to exhaustion. And when it clicked in his mind, he couldn’t understand why it had taken him this long to realize: the only right thing for him to do, at this point, was bring the Avatar back to the Fire Nation, as he’d sworn to do. Because being the Avatar didn’t actually mean he had to fight the Fire Nation—in fact, in a twisted way, this was a stroke of luck, for him and his country both. 

Zuko being the Avatar was much better than him capturing the Avatar and bringing him back in chains, because Zuko was the kind of Avatar who would gladly put all of his abilities toward helping his people. More than that, now his father couldn’t see him as the shamefully weak son anymore—he’d be the powerful Avatar, a mighty weapon against the Fire Nation’s enemies. This was his second chance! 

He had to go back to the Fire Nation as soon as possible. 

Heart soaring, Zuko nearly leapt from his seat and ordered the ship back, unheeding of the hour. But then he realized that there was a slight problem: whenever he imagined the family reunion, either Azula or Father always asked him to show his Avatar abilities, and Zuko did it, brilliantly… the way he currently couldn’t. He’d still never manipulated air on purpose—nor any other element save fire, for that matter. If he turned up at the capital like this, Azula would laugh at him and Father would assume that he was trying to earn his way home with lies. Just the thought of it made Zuko cringe.

So he couldn’t go home quite yet. But he had a goal: he needed to master those other elements somehow, or at least one of them, and then he’d sail home and return himself to the family’s embrace. His father would look upon him with pride and Azula would be forced to acknowledge him as her equal, or even as someone who’d surpassed her abilities. Zuko was the Avatar now—that meant he was strong, right?

His firebending didn’t see any leaps of improvement, but Zuko tried not to be bothered by this.

He had a plan now. He knew what he had to do. Avatar or not, he’d never give up on trying to make his father proud.

***

That morning, when he’d finally succumbed to sleep, he dreamed of the airbender kid again. It was infinitely creepier now that Zuko had seen him dead.

“You’re dead,” Zuko informed him. 

“I am,” the kid agreed, and he looked very sad about it. 

“You were in an iceberg,” Zuko added.

“Yes,” Aang said, and looked even sadder than before. “I got caught in a storm. Took Appa with me, too, cost him his life, it—” He inhaled a shuddering breath. “Let’s not talk about it. Are you ready to discuss being the Avatar now?”

“Yes!” Zuko said. He didn’t care if this was a tiny kid who was also dead in an iceberg; he was taking this chance to learn as much as possible. “You said you were the Avatar, right, so can you tell me how to unlock my powers? I want to learn everything. How do I reach the Avatar state?”

“Hey, hey, slow down,” Aang laughed. “You’ve just started out on the Avatar path, so maybe first we should discuss what that’s all about, since you’re new to this—”

“I already know my path,” Zuko said. 

“That’s great!” Aang enthused. “So you’re going to train your skills and then go out into the world and restore balance between nations?”

“Yes,” Zuko said. “I’ll use my skills to help the Fire Nation win the war.”

What followed was a very tedious shouting session Zuko kept trying, and failing, to wake up from. 

Well. If the Avatar spirits were unhappy with what Zuko was planning to do, they shouldn’t have made him the Avatar, and that was that. It was his show now.

***

Several days after the fight with Aang, it dawned on Zuko that he’d essentially had a blow-out with his only lead on how to master airbending. Waterbending was a no go after that disastrous visit to the Southern Water Tribe. 

That left earth.

Zuko mulled this over for a while and decided that, possibly, he should’ve chosen earth first. The Earth Kingdom was mostly conquered by the Fire Nation; how hard could it be to find an earthbender there to teach Zuko? Not hard, he figured.

“Set the course for the nearest Earth Kingdom port,” Zuko told Lieutenant Jee.

“Yes, Prince Zuko,” Jee said, sounding resigned. Possibly, he was counting himself lucky that Zuko hadn’t chosen to drag them all the way to the Northern Water Tribe in search of more waterbenders. 

With the ship en route to the Earth Kingdom, Zuko plotted. He wouldn’t be able to train under the watchful eyes of his crew, and this meant that, as soon as he got to the Earth Kingdom, he’d need to take off and leave them behind. The trouble was, if he made it an order and delivered it in front of his uncle, his uncle would absolutely insist on coming along. He was single-minded like that. 

But Zuko couldn’t let anyone else come with him. It was his journey and his alone, and he wouldn’t talk of being the Avatar until he could actually back it up. 

Zuko would leave a note that the ship should wait for him, he decided. He’d leave a note and sneak out in the night—he was good at sneaking—and nobody had to worry, and nobody had to know. And then he’d be back before long, as a powerful Avatar who would command respect, and he would sail home and be welcomed by his father, and finally, finally his honour would be restored and his exile would end.

It was a foolproof plan.

**II.**

The Earth Kingdom is lot bigger and a lot less friendly than Zuko expected.

Zuko decides that, before he starts looking for earthbenders, he needs to get far enough away from his ship that Uncle won’t find him again immediately. This is easily accomplished by donning his Blue Spirit disguise and flitting from village to village, pilfering some food in the night and leaving coins to pay for it. His purse is fat enough, and he knows how to move through the night, leaving no traces.

It’s when he finally gets far enough for his liking and starts looking for earthbenders that Zuko encounters his first problems.

“I am Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation,” he announces, walking into a village whose name he doesn’t bother learning. “I am looking for earthbenders.”

“P-prince Zuko?” exclaims the Fire Nation captain in charge of the place. “Please, come this way! Do me the honour of taking some luncheon with me in my humble abode!”

“I’m not looking for a luncheon,” Zuko explains, quite patiently, he believes. “I need earthbenders. Do you have any of those here, or not?”

“I would love nothing more than to help you, Your Highness,” the captain says, standing at attention. “But I must report that all of the area’s earthbenders have been taken away to work on the Fire Nation’s coal mining projects.”

“All of them?” Zuko exclaims, dismayed.

“Down to the last one,” the man confirms.

It’s the same story in the other towns controlled by the Fire Nation. There were earthbenders here, he is assured, but none are left, because all of them have been sent to toil for the Fire Nation.

Zuko is beginning to notice a pattern. First, the Southern Water Tribe didn’t have waterbenders because the Fire Nation beat Zuko to them; then the same is happening with earthbenders in the Earth Kingdom. This is awfully inconvenient. 

(It’s also somewhat strange, if Zuko’s honest. He wonders if all these waterbenders and earthbenders have done some great wrong and are being punished, like Zuko is being punished with his exile.)

So, after realizing that he’ll get nowhere in the Fire Nation-controlled areas, Zuko sees that he’ll have to be more creative and go deeper into the Earth Kingdom. That’s where he learns his second lesson: in the areas not under the Fire Nation’s civilizing influence, his name and title are decidedly _not_ helpful.

“I am Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation,” he announces, expecting the usual obedience and awe, and instead gets the town attacking him with earthbending and pitchforks.

“I’m not here to fight you!” he tries to convince them. “I’m just looking for some earthbenders!”

But this argument gets him about as far as it did with the Southern Water Tribe, except here he is alone, and surrounded, and the balance of power is decidedly on the villagers’ side.

Zuko is not used to it. Zuko isn’t used to any of it, but he gets the same treatment in the next village, and then the one after that is _ready_ for him, recognizing and attacking him as soon as he steps foot within its gates.

Winded, and tired, and smarting from all the blows and falls he’s sustained in the past few days, Zuko uses the last of his money to bribe a passing farmer to smuggle him out and leave him a safe distance away.

***

From then, things get harder. Zuko no longer has any money, and, worst of all, he’s tired, the way he’s never really been before: constantly on the move, never getting enough to eat and always on alert lest he be attacked.

Shivering on the ground under the canopy of trees at night, Zuko can’t help thinking longingly back to his ship, to its warm bed and regular meals and even his uncle’s incessant offers of tea, his jovial smiles. Nobody has smiled at Zuko in what feels like eons and he’s so, so tired of the endless trek through this land that hates him.

But tempting as the thought of returning to the ship is, Zuko also can’t countenance the idea of returning with his tail between his legs, looking like a starved stray; of arousing the curiosity of his men and then crawling back an obvious, abject failure. 

He came to the Earth Kingdom to learn earthbending. So he will, no matter what obstacles stand in his way.

What he needs, he realizes with gritted teeth, is to disguise himself better. He needs to lower his head and bite his tongue and blend in, and only then he might survive long enough to fulfil his goals.

Taking down his topknot and letting his hair hang loose around his face feels like a bigger step than it should, given that it’s only hair. But with his hair in such disarray and his clothing nondescript and covered in road dust, he could be anyone, just another stray teen in the Earth Kingdom.

He’s still Prince Zuko at heart, he tells himself. The moment he’s achieved his task here, he’ll put his hair back in the topknot and assume his own name and title. Until then, it’s a question of living day to day. So, the next time he walks into a village and faces the question of who he is and where he’s from, he makes himself say:

“I’m Lee, I’m…  my parents were earthbenders, but they’re dead, and now I’m looking for someone to teach me. Say, you don’t have any earthbenders around who could do it, do you?”

The answer is no, but his new approach makes the difference of getting a cup of water handed to him versus having the cup thrown in his face, and by now Zuko is exhausted enough that this difference matters.

***

“You’re a refugee too, aren’t you?” an old lady says to him one day, shaking her head. “That’s what the Fire Nation does, that’s all it’s good for—creating orphans and tearing villages apart. You’ve been hurt by them too, haven’t you?” she asks, looking obviously at his scar, and Zuko gets so angry he very nearly burns her house down. 

Zuko hasn’t been wronged by the Fire Nation! It’s all this thrice-damned scar, making him look like a victim, creating the perfect, most humiliating disguise. _Of course_ people look at him and see evidence of the Fire Nation’s violence writ large across his face. Little do they know that Zuko is the engineer of his own fate, that he’s the one who wronged his family and put a stain on their honour, that he’s no pitiful refugee, but a powerful prince who… who’s just currently… he’s reduced to this, momentarily, but it’s all by his own choice. No one else but him is responsible for all this, least of all the Fire Nation.

“I don’t need your pity,” Zuko snarls and walks away, because what else is he going to do—respond with violence, burn everything and cement the old lady’s idea of what the Fire Nation is? 

***

And still, Zuko can admit to himself sometimes deep in the night that it’s scary and unsettling, the way people hate the Fire Nation around here. The Fire Nation wants nothing but peace and progress for the whole world, but here they’re seen as ruthless military invaders, almost worse than plundering pirates, and… honestly, it’s so far away from home that Zuko is certain his father has no way of knowing about this, but he’s noticed some abuse of power by Fire Nation soldiers, too.

On one memorable occasion, he’s staying the night at a peasant family’s house—well, in the barn, to be exact—when shouts wake him up. Zuko hurries over to see what’s going on and walks straight into the middle of a confrontation between the peasants and two Fire Nation soldiers who’ve apparently disturbed the entire household to demand taxes Zuko _knows_ are made up.

“Pay up, scum,” one of the soldiers says, “if you don’t want your pathetic hovel burnt down.”

“Please, sir, we don’t have money,” the man of the family begs. “We’ve already paid the taxes, and this is the first we hear of this new levy—”

“The first, but not the last, if you don’t pay,” the second soldier interjects. “Move it, peasant.”

Zuko cannot believe his eyes and ears.

“What are you doing?” he hisses. “This tax doesn’t exist! You’re just trying to extort money from these people!”

“And who the hell are you?” the first solder demands, throwing a disdainful glance Zuko’s way. “Shut up if you don’t want to find yourself in trouble.”

“You have no right!” Zuko shouts back. “And I’m not going to let you do this!”

He feels like he’s living in some surreal nightmare where the Earth Kingdom peasants are right and the Fire Nation soldiers are wrong, but this is exactly what’s happening here.

How can this be happening?

“Lee, don’t get involved,” the mother of the family whispers to him urgently. “You don’t know what they’re capable of—”

“No, let’s show him,” the second soldier says, and takes a step towards Zuko.

Neither of the soldiers counts on Zuko having had top-notch martial arts training, or his skill with his blades. Zuko doesn’t even need to use his firebending to throw both soldiers out on their ear.

Nobody can believe this happened, Zuko least of all.

“Lee, you’re our saviour!” the mother of the family cries, and attempts to draw him into an embrace—only to have him angrily push her away.

Zuko has just lifted his swords against the Fire Nation _._ He can’t stand to be in this house a moment longer. He runs without saying goodbye, and doesn’t stop until his legs collapse under him.

Despite his exhaustion, he can’t sleep several nights afterwards, horrified at himself and feeling like a traitor to his people. But that was _unfair._ He couldn’t have just let those Fire Nation soldiers stain the honour of their country like that, act like thugs instead of the noble warriors that they’re meant to be. 

***

Sometimes, Aang appears in Zuko’s dreams. He doesn’t say anything, just looks really, really sad when his gaze crosses Zuko’s.

***

Zuko would be feeling better about his situation if it had at least brought him closer to finding an earthbending teacher, but, even when he finds promising prospective mentors, his encounters with them go like this:

“No, I’m not looking for students right now, young man. Better luck next time.”

Or:

“What do you mean, you can’t pay me?”

The former don’t hesitate to engage him in combat if he tries to insist. To the latter, he’s attempted to promise future rewards, but only got laughed at in response, and no wonder, given his present appearance.

Still, Zuko has a new plan. From talk here and there, he’s picked up the fact that there’s a big gathering of earthbenders in Gaoling, some sort of an earthbending tournament where various masters will show off their skills. This is exactly the kind of event Zuko should be at, because maybe then one of these masters will agree to teach him, and then… then Zuko will finally learn earthbending and return to his ship, triumphant.

The thought keeps him upright and walking for the next several days.

***

Zuko arrives in Gaoling at night. He’s hungry, and sore all over, and his whole body feels like immeasurably heavy ballast. His worldly desires have narrowed to _food, bed and warmth,_ but his first attempt to procure these gets him booted out of the town inn. 

Zuko revises his list of needs. _Sleep,_ then he can arrange for food and warmth. At this point, collapsing anywhere at all seems like a great option.

Sleeping on the street wouldn’t be safe at all, so Zuko meanders in search of better lodgings until he comes across an estate surrounded by a fence. It’s so large that surely there’s going to be a corner of it he can claim without anyone noticing, and he’ll be gone by morning. He’s done it before, slept on people’s private property without them realizing, broken into sheds to escape rain. He’ll be fine.

He climbs over the fence, using the last of his strained concentration to do so, and then collapses in a discreet spot by the wall. He’ll just have a little night’s rest and then, tomorrow morning, he’ll figure out the whole earthbending tournament thing.

He’s woken at the crack of dawn by a tiny girl who somehow manages to tower over him. It’s probably because he’s prone on the ground and she’s standing directly over him.

“Uh,” Zuko says, trying to gather his wits. His tongue feels too huge and unwieldy in his mouth, and he coughs, trying to clear his parched throat.

“Who’re you?” the girl demands. “And you’d better answer, or you won’t like what’s coming to you!”

“Uh,” Zuko says again, intelligently. “Nobody. I’m sorry, I’ll—I’ll just leave.” He sits up and struggles to get up. 

“Whoa, are you okay?” the girl asks. “You’re all unstable on your feet. What are you doing in my garden?”

“Nothing,” Zuko says. “I mean, I was sleeping. I mean, I’m going now.”

“No, you’re not,” the girl says and stomps her foot. The ground surges forward, grasping Zuko’s ankles, and suddenly he’s fixed to his spot and feeling a lot more awake for it.

“You’re an earthbender,” he says wonderingly.

“No shit,” the girl snorts. “And you’re about to keel over. Hey, were you going to rob my house?”

“What? No!” Zuko protests, all the more loudly outraged because, well… it may have happened once or twice on the road that he’s stolen stuff from people. It’s not that unreasonable of an accusation, though it should be unthinkable for the heir to the Fire Nation throne.

“Yeah, for a robber you’re kind of lousy,” the girl muses. “The sleeping, it wasn’t the most cunning plan. Hey, wanna come inside? We have lots of food and whatever, and it’s warmer there.”

“You… are inviting me into your house?” Zuko asks, blinking.

“Sure,” the girl says, bouncing a little. “My parents would pitch such a fit if they knew, it’s great. Though of course we shouldn’t actually let them find out.”

Zuko doesn’t understand anything. The fog in his head hasn’t cleared enough to let him in on what’s going on here. However, he hears the promise of food and warmth, and both these things sound great, especially as it also seems like they’re going to come for free.

“Okay,” he says cautiously. “But before that, maybe release my feet?”

“Oh, right,” the girl says. She stomps again, and the restrains fall away. “Come on.” She turns around and walks away towards… well, that’s a rather large house there in the distance. At night, Zuko couldn’t see it, but now it looks rather imposing.  

“This is your house?” he checks, just in case. 

“Yes, obviously,” the girl says. “I’m Toph, by the way. Toph Beifong.”

“That’s nice,” Zuko mumbles.

“This is where you give me your name,” the girl says helpfully.

“Uh, my name is Lee,” Zuko says.

“Right,” Toph says, sounding somehow skeptical. “And how did you come to lounge about in my garden, Lee?”

“It’s a long story,” Zuko says. It’s not the best attempt at an evasive manoeuvre he’s ever managed, but this is the best his brain can come up with right now. 

They get into Toph’s house via a well-hidden backdoor—Zuko gets the impression that Toph is a pro at sneaking in and out of this place—and Toph makes the way to a spacious, warm, lovely kitchen.

In his previous life, back before he’d started his trek through the Earth Kingdom, Zuko never appreciated kitchens enough. His outlook on them has done a complete change since.

Toph sits him down, gives him rice and some pau buns and Zuko hates the way he’s almost teary-eyed with gratitude, that this matters so much to him now. That he’s sunk so low that such a small gesture from a stranger makes a huge difference in his life nowadays.

He really needs to get himself straightened out and return to being Prince Zuko again.

“Hey, so you’re an earthbender,” he says again, swallowing another mouthful of his rice. “How did you do that thing? Can you teach me?”

Because if Zuko is one thing, it’s determined, and the thought of finding a teacher is never too far from his mind.

“Teach you?” Toph tilts her head to the side. “What, you’re an earthbender too?”

“Not yet,” Zuko says. “But I have to learn it, and I’ve been trying to find a teacher, but—”

“Wait, do you know who I am?” Toph sounds suddenly suspicious. 

“No?” Zuko frowns. “I mean, you said you’re Toph Beifong?”

“And that’s all you know?” Toph presses. 

Zuko rubs his forehead. “Well, you’re short? And probably a lot younger than me? But you seem to know some earthbending, so—”

“Some earthbending?!” Toph screeches. “Some??” She jumps up and pokes herself in the chest. “I’m only the champion of the Earth Rumble Tournament! The unbeatable one! The Blind Bandit!”

And it’s only now that she says it that Zuko looks closer at her and realizes, that, yes, the girl is actually blind. He hadn’t seen it earlier in the dark, and then he’s not bothered looking, but the way she acts, the way she moves, earthbends—

Apparently, it’s her earthbending that helps her navigate without her sight. Also, apparently she’s absolutely great at earthbending, or so she says. Zuko supposes she has to be at least somewhat good in order for her blindness not to hinder her.

“So can you teach me?” he asks at the end of her outraged explanation. “I, I can’t pay you yet, but my family has money, so later, I can—”

“If your family has money, why’re you here like this?” Toph asks, leaning in to—well, it can’t be to look at him. To sniff him? Whatever. “Wait, don’t tell me, I’ll guess. You’re a runaway! Man, good on you! Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to run away? Super many.” She hums a little to herself. “I guess you’re not doing too good out there, though.”

“I’m fine,” Zuko snaps, stiffening. “I was just—”

“This isn’t gonna be easy,” Toph muses, ignoring him. “Say I agree to teach you because us runaways—or potential runaways—gotta stick together, and also I’m bored, but where’re you gonna live? My garden isn’t the place, you know. I guess we could steal some of my family’s money and put you up at the inn…”

“You don’t have to do that!” Zuko says hastily. He’s only just appeared and he’s already leading a 12-year-old girl into a life of crime. This wasn’t what he set out to do here.

“Shut up, it’ll be fun!” Toph says, clapping her hands. “It’ll be like having my own pet student!”

“I’m not a pet!” Zuko snaps.

“Great, so that’s settled!”

***

Zuko’s life does, in fact, take a turn for the better at this point. Toph takes him very decidedly under her wing, and he protests and resists this at first, but then, the longer he hangs around her, the more he realizes that she does all this partially because she’s terribly, crushingly lonely. If he stays because she agrees to teach him the skill he’s after, then she keeps him around because he constitutes the entirety of her social circle. Toph doesn’t have friends. Toph doesn’t go out and meet other kids. Toph has parents who don’t know her at all, and handlers who don’t even want to know her. And despite all of this, Toph is an outgoing, active person, and she’s suffocating in her well-maintained, beautiful home where she’s treated like a doll.

Zuko’s never had friends either, and he’s never particularly sought them—it was Azula who had a coterie of girls around her at all times—but he can recognize some of the feelings Toph is dealing with. They commiserate with each other on going to elaborate receptions and feeling like a fish out of water, with no one to talk to, and they agree on how annoying it is to be _handled._ It’s… strange, the way they talk sometimes. Zuko imagines it’s almost like having a friend.

Toph is ruthless as an earthbending instructor, though. Luckily, Zuko seems to have some affinity for the subject once he picks up some basic moves—Toph says, approvingly, that he’s got that feet-firmly-on-the-ground unshakeable determination that a true earthbender needs—so he does feel like he’s making progress, but every day leaves him feeling a little more battered, with a few more bruises to show for his efforts.

Still, he’s learning. He’s _learning earthbending._ He can firebend and he can also earthbend a little and he’s really, truly the Avatar.

It boggles his mind every time he thinks about it. 

***

Aang starts talking in his dreams again about then. He seems somewhat antsy.

“So have you thought any more about this Avatar thing?” he asks, scratching his bald head. 

“No,” Zuko says. “I’m still going to—” Wait, he thinks. He’s had this argument once and got nowhere. His recent experiences in the Earth Kingdom have taught him this much, at least: sometimes, in order to get what you want, you have to pretend. “I’m going to restore balance to the world,” he invents. “Isn’t that what Avatars do?” 

Aang squints at him. “Restore the balance how? By letting the Fire Nation conquer everyone?”

“No,” Zuko says, “of course not. I’ll… learn all of this Avatar stuff and then come back to my father and convince him that it doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to fight. He probably doesn’t know, but other people don’t want us here, they see it as a war and not as the spread of civilization, so—I’m sure we can work out a compromise.”

As he says it, it doesn’t even sound like that bad of a plan, actually. It’s true that the Earth Kingdom and the Southern Water Tribe hate the Fire Nation far beyond what it deserves and consider themselves to be hurt by it. And this war really is destroying a lot of things that don’t have to be destroyed, so maybe there’s another way to bring enlightenment to these people? Zuko thinks his father would listen if he could only explain it properly. His father isn’t here, he doesn’t know what the conditions on the ground are like.

“I’m not sure about this, Zuko,” Aang says, looking troubled. “Sozin’s Comet is returning this summer, do you know? And then all firebenders will become so powerful, that—well, I’m afraid your father is planning something big for that day.”

“My father wouldn’t do anything dishonourable!” Zuko snaps.

“Zuko…” Aang sighs. “You know, that duel you had with him—”

“It was my own fault,” Zuko says, gritting his teeth. “I was disrespectful and he had no choice but to punish me.”

Aang is silent.

“You just don’t understand because you’re an airbender,” Zuko says. “Things are different over where you grew up.”

“Yeah,” Aang says heavily. “Where I grew up, everyone is dead now. You know when that happened? During the first time Sozin’s Comet came around.”

Zuko flushes hot, then cold. “If you’re trying to say that my father would—”

“You know what, I think you’ll probably have to talk to Avatar Roku,” Aang says. “I’ll bring him next time. He’ll explain this better than me.”

***

Avatar Roku, when they meet, claims that Zuko is his great-grandson. This floors Zuko so much, the next day he completely messes up his defensive moves and gets a chest full of rocks for his inattention. 

“Pick it up, Snoozy, and look lively!” Toph calls, cackling madly. “Do better this time!”

Between Toph’s brutal training during the day—“you never whinge and try to skive off, Snoozy, I’ll give you that much”—and Aang’s incessant chattering at night, Zuko’s feeling like he’s living two very different but equally busy lives. He’s still not sure he’s buying what Roku is selling, but he’s managed to get back into Aang’s good graces well enough that Aang has agreed to teach him some airbending basics. This means that, even during his waking hours, Zuko is trying to practice airbending as much as possible, on top of his earthbending lessons.

Naturally, at one point, this results in him messing up.

Toph hurls another massive rock at him—and Zuko fumbles, delays a moment too long, and, instead of an earthbending move, executes an airbending one.

He follows it up with the earthbending move a moment later, but it’s too late. Toph has noticed and she stands, frozen, a few feet away.

“You’re an airbender,” she says.

“No, no,” Zuko denies frantically.

“Yes, you are!” she shouts. “Don’t lie to me! You’re an airbender, I felt it! But if you’re an airbender and an earthbender too—does that mean—are you the Avatar?!”

She sounds about as upset by this as Zuko himself was, at the beginning. It’s also rapidly becoming obvious that lying will get him nowhere. He does the next best thing: he freaks out.

“Shhh!” he hisses. “Don’t—it’s a secret, okay? Don’t tell anyone, or I’ll—I’ll—” 

“I’d make a pancake out of you in two seconds flat if you tried anything,” Toph says, and she sounds angry and betrayed still. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! You liar!”

“Look, most days I try not to even think about it, so—”

“Why, don’t you want to be the Avatar?” Toph asks, head cocked to the side.

“I don’t know.” Zuko deflates and rubs his forehead. “It’s complicated.”

He has to tell Toph some of it, then, a heavily abridged version. He tells her about the dreams with the airbender kid, and the demands the previous Avatar lives make for restoring balance, whatever that even means, and that he can’t go back to his family until he can prove that he’s the Avatar. He may or may not imply that he’s from the Earth Kingdom; he feels that if, on top of everything, he’d also reveal being Fire Nation, this would end their association on the spot, and he still needs earthbending lessons.

Toph forgives him, but she still smacks him on the shoulder really hard.

***

Everything goes well until the day the Water Tribe siblings arrive into town and tell Toph who Zuko is. 

Zuko never even finds out what they were doing there; the point of the matter is, they arrive and turn Zuko’s life upside down, because they saw him as Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, menacing their people, and now they find him here learning earthbending with a girl whose trust he’s lied his way into, and of course they’re outraged and of course it all ends in disaster.

“He’s a Fire Nation prince!” the girl shouts, and turns out to be a _waterbender,_ because she attacks Zuko with water from the nearby stream.

“You lied too!” he yells back. “You’re a waterbender!”

“And you’re Fire Nation scum!” the girl’s brother responds, throwing his boomerang at Zuko.

It’s a friendly reunion that only gets better once Toph gets properly pissed off and starts flinging rocks at everyone. 

“So what if he’s Fire Nation!” she screams, not really sounding like she believes what she’s saying. “He’s the Avatar!”

“I knew it!” the Water Tribe girl screeches. “I saw him airbend!”

Then she sees Zuko earthbending, too, because he blocks her jet of water with rocks shooting out of the ground.

“If he’s the Avatar, why are you trying to attack him?” Toph asks. “Is this a thing, do you just hate Avatars?”

Both Water Tribe siblings look somewhat uncertain at this point. “But he’s Fire Nation. He’s just going to help the Fire Nation win the war, won’t he?”

At this point, Toph rounds on Zuko too, and—

Zuko has never actually thought he’d feel bad about the very reasonable plan to help his nation win—even if he’s got other options he’s considering now, it’s still his duty to support his country—but when Toph turns to him, waiting for him to contradict the Water Tribe siblings, he feels a stab right into his heart, like he’ll be betraying her if he says that, yes, he’s just been using her all this time to learn everything he can to go on and defeat her nation. Because, come to think of it, he _would_ be betraying her by doing that.

But, by not doing that, he’d be betraying his whole country. 

“I don’t know,” he says helplessly. 

“So all of that,” Toph says, her eyes filling with tears, “you collapsing in my garden, the friendly act, was all of it—was any of it real?”

“All of it,” Zuko says. “I swear it was all real. I just didn’t tell you where I was from. Or who I really was.”

“Well, you goddamn should have,” Toph says, and then she turns and walks away, and Zuko feels she won’t forgive him so easily this time. 

***

Zuko waits for Toph, coming to their usual training grounds. She never shows.

And then one day, passing through the centre of town, he sees new posters put up: ones of Prince Zuko, declaring him to be a deserter and offering a reward for anyone who knows where to find him.

That’s when Zuko realizes that he’s been gone too long. He doesn’t know what happened back home, what’s going on with his ship, but he can’t bear the thought of it, that some people think that he ran away like a coward. That he abandoned his search for the Avatar, the task given to him by his father, and just disappeared into the woods one day.

He needs to return to his ship at once. He needs to tell everywhere where he is, that he’s still true to the Fire Nation, that he never abandoned his goal.

 _It’s too early,_ Zuko thinks. He’s still far from really mastering earthbending, and his airbending is also shaky. He’s not nearly as powerful as he hoped to be upon his triumphant return home.

But he can do some earthbending and airbending now, on purpose. It’ll be enough to show to his father and to Azula, to convince them that he’s the Avatar.

And that’s what he’s wanted all along, isn’t it?

Somehow, the thought feels a lot more hollow than it did when he’d hatched this plan onboard his ship. 

Zuko comes to Toph’s training grounds one last time. Then he tracks down the Water Tribe siblings.

“Give Toph this when you see her,” he says gruffly, thrusting a piece of parchment at them.

“How do you expect her to read it?” the boy asks, raising an eyebrow.

Zuko grinds his teeth in frustration. “You can read it to her, I don’t care. But I have to go, and I can’t leave without an explanation.” And he doesn’t want to break into Toph’s house when she’s so determined to avoid him. It would feel like betraying her trust again.

“Go?” the waterbender girl asks. “Are you returning to the Fire Nation? It’s about those posters, isn’t it?”

“Are you going to deliver the note to Toph or not?” Zuko snaps.

“So you’re really doing it, you’re going back,” the girl says bitterly. “Some Avatar you are.”

 _I don’t actually want this war either,_ Zuko thinks. _I especially don’t want it for Toph; I don’t want to bring it here, to her door. If I can do something to stop it without hurting the Fire Nation, I will._

He doesn’t say any of this, though. He just turns on his heel and walks away, feeling the Water Tribe siblings’ gazes on his back as he goes.

It’s time for Prince Zuko to come home.

**III.**

In not too distant a future, Zuko will be greeted back in the Fire Nation with open arms, just as he’s hoped. His father will be incredulous at first, but then praises will pour on Zuko’s head for having managed to acquire Avatar abilities and for turning them for the benefit of his country. Azula will sneer that Zuko is still weaker than her at firebending despite being the Avatar, but she’ll look troubled by his sudden change in status. Zuko will reunite with his uncle, who’ll clasp him to his chest and say that he’s been terribly worried, and that Zuko is never allowed to pull a stunt like this again. He’ll look concerned about Zuko’s new abilities, though, and tell him to be careful.

Zuko won’t understand why until all the exercises to unlock his Avatar state begin.

***

“The day Sozin’s Comet comes, the world will never know what hit it,” Zuko’s father will say. “We will have the entire might of our army and the Avatar on our side. Forget the defences of Ba Sing Se—we can destroy the Earth Kingdom completely.”

And Zuko will go cold, and Aang’s warnings will get increasingly more urgent in his dreams. 

Zuko will remember the fields and valleys of the Earth Kingdom, its countless people. He’ll recall the peasants made poor by the Fire Nation’s raids, the grateful smiles of that family he’s helped once, Toph’s ringing laugh. It will dawn on him, gradually, that he is expected to be one of the main instruments in the planned destruction of it all.

He’ll think of Aang, of all the tales about his dead airbender friends.

And then, one day, he’ll see the Water Tribe girl dragged into the Fire Nation palace in chains. 

“Look, Zuzu,” Azula will say, a sharp smile curving her mouth. “We’ve found you a waterbending teacher.”

It will be then, staring into the defiant eyes of this girl he’s met twice and whose name he doesn’t know, that Zuko will realize with stark, painful certainty that he won’t be able to stay in his home for much longer. That he’ll have to leave the palace, leave his people, grab this girl and run and—

And start working against his father, like Aang, and Roku, and Toph, and everyone else has wanted him to all along.

Zuko will have to become a traitor to his people. But, at this point, he won’t be able to imagine doing anything else, because the magnitude of the looming disaster will be too staggering, and he won’t be able to bear it on his conscience. He won’t be able to live with himself if he doesn’t do something. 

And this decision will have nothing to do with him being the Avatar, and everything to do with how, having reached the place at his family’s bosom he’s craved for so long, he will find it to be but a grotesque caricature of his dreams.

***

Zuko will sneak into the prison tower one day, his swords on his back and a mask for his disguise. He’ll free the waterbender girl, whose name is apparently Katara. He will help her escape and run away with her, too, having left only a note on his bedside table.

He’ll be numb, unable to believe his own actions, moving as if in a daze. The waterbender girl won’t talk to him much at first, and the silence will suit him, but then she’ll get concerned by his thousand-yard stares and try to prod him into a semblance of normality. 

Aang, too, will talk to him, trying to convince him that he’s made the right choice. 

Together, they’ll annoy Zuko enough that he’ll be present most of the time, but some days he’ll still feel that he’s just floating, like in some bizarre dream.

He’s run away once before, from his ship, but he’s always intended to come back. Now, he’ll be planning to come back as, what—the conqueror of his own country, aiding his people’s enemies? Zuko won’t even know what his plan is.

***

Katara will steer him back towards where her brother and Toph are. It will turn out that the two of them have teamed up and tried to rescue Katara, but Zuko, understandably, has got there first.

It will be awkward at the beginning, Zuko and Toph not knowing what to say to each other, Zuko and Sokka—Katara’s brother—even less so. But it will get better as days go by and Zuko gets more accustomed to this new reality in which he doesn’t really have a home to return to anymore unless he wins it back with this puny band of allies at his side.

The day he meets his uncle again will be the day things will truly fall into place.

“Zuko,” his uncle will say, engulfing him in a crushing embrace. “What did I tell you about running away again?”

“I’m sorry, Uncle,” Zuko will say, trying to control his tear ducts. “You don’t hate me for betraying the Fire Nation?”

“Oh, nephew,” Uncle will say sadly. “We have so much to discuss. Let me introduce you to the members of the White Lotus.”

After that day, the fate of the world will never be the same. But Zuko will, to his own surprise, find that he’s quite okay with that.


End file.
